a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Playoffs R1G1: The Jazz were…

We had no answer for Tony Parker. When you add in Tim Duncan throwing down vicious dunks, Manu Ginobili doing what he does, and Matt Bonner shooting threes like he was playing the Jazz (oh wait, he was), you get a loss.

It wasn’t overly upsetting or painful in that a loss wasn’t unexpected, and I thought our guys did what they could to stay in the game.

Total trip afterwards seeing Not Jerry-with-glasses-on at the podium with the NBA Playoffs logo in the background…

…just as it was not seeing Deron either. I love that they had Paul and Al up there together, though, and I love that Al didn’t put on his gargantuan diamond earrings so that Paul’s wouldn’t look tiny in comparison. #bromance

Thought this comment by Millsap in the post-game was pretty funny:

When we get down low, we need to work on our spacing. We need to get more movement, more cuts against a good basketball team. It’s going to be tough to just throw it in to me and Al and just say “go to work” because they’re sitting there watching everything we do.

Isn’t “throw it to Al and let him go to work” exactly what’s written on that single page that constitutes the Jazz’s playbook? The one exception was the OKC game on Mar. 20 when Tyrone Corbin drew up the last play for Al and Al said to give it to Paul instead, so Corbin ran the exact same play for Paul instead. I guess that’s when the playbook was amended to say “throw it in to Al or Paul.”

‘K, I’m totally just rambling now. No UDQMs. No opponent game thread. Meh.

Jim,
All you’ll find here is my perspective on the Jazz. If my perspective aggravates or annoys you–and I say this very respectfully–please don’t read this blog. There are tons of other quality Jazz blogs out there that I’m sure would be more to your liking, and I’m sure they would be happy to add a new reader. You can check the “Utah Jazz Blogs” section on the top of the page; there are a number of great blogs listed there.

For all that the Spurs have that the Jazz don’t, I still feel like the Spurs are the single NBA team that plays so hard and so smart that I want the Jazz to become them. Every single hesitation from our guys was punished, both on D and on O. If you ask me, the best thing for our young guys is to watch a model of success that is based on more than pilling up supernatural talent and having it work itself out (OKC, Miami, Lakers, etc).

Pop says they modeled themselves after the Jazz, it’s our turn to return the favor. (I feel Ty has a LONG way to go to get there, though. His in game adjustments make me sad.)

Agree with everything you said. The Spurs are kind of like the ultimate model for this Jazz team. On Ty, I didn’t have any expectations for how many games he would win or what kind of coach he would be as a new coach. The *one* thing I hoped he’d be an “improvement” on Jerry was having a more fluid rotation and more playing time for younger players. In this regard, I’ve been disappointed, especially when I saw the quote from Pop yesterday saying that he’s been running different rotations all season long just so every guy gets used to playing with every other guy.

Yeah! Ty’s playbook has a lot of Jerry’s in it and I can’t complain. He also seems to motivate the guys and keep them together very well. But the rotations and substitutions, gahhh!

Besides that, I wonder if our coaching staff really gets to show our guys all the improvements they can make, because I seem to catch so many repeated mistakes. The last game looked like 48 minutes of mistakes to be talked over, actually…